Brunnus poured himself another silver winecup of Privatus’ elegant table liquor. “We don’t necessarily want to cuddle up.”
“Problems?” I asked.
“The guild can be a bit pushy,” Brunnus admitted.
From what I had seen of their street behavior, that was an understatement. “How powerful is this guild?”
“Too powerful!” growled Petronius.
“Look, Ostia is packed with craft guilds and associations,” Brunnus told me. “They do no harm; we tolerate them. You know how it works—the leading lights in a trade meet for dinner parties; they club together for burial funds; they raise civic statues. The wine merchants have their own forum; when I want to spend a happy afternoon, I descend to check their licenses. The shipwrights are traditionally the biggest mob—but the builders are coming up fast due to all the public works contracts in and around the harbor.”
I could see that. Our absent host Privatus was rolling in money. This dining room opened onto a small interior garden, which was frescoed in ocean scenes. At the far end stood a grotto made from intricately patterned seashells. Floating lamps drifted among water lilies on a long pool between the couches. I had a horrible feeling our dinner would come served on pure gold model ships.
“I can see Privatus is raking it in.”
“Privatus hasn’t even started,” moaned Petronius. “He wants to redevelop the whole bloody town. So tell us, Falco, was there any unacceptable pushing and shoving at this fire you witnessed?” I guessed he and Brunnus would like to collect evidence of bad behavior to pressure the vigiles management into ditching the builders as firefighters.
“Now Lucius, old pal, if you’re so keen to jump out of bed with Privatus, why did you ever agree to be put up here in his house?”
“Rubella.” Rubella was the tribune of the Fourth Cohort, Petro’s chief. Rubella knew that Petronius Longus was a damn good officer, but suspected him of subtle insubordination. Rubella would not usually provide letters of introduction.
“Rubella’s a joke to you!”
Petronius pretended to have a nervous tic, brought on by stress due to mention of his senior officer. But then he said, “Have to admit, he fixed me up very nicely.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Official initiative to improve relations with the builders. Rubella asked me to fraternize.”
“So where have you been fixed up to socialize?” I asked, turning to Brunnus.
“We’re not that fraternal. I have to rough it at the station house.” There was a pause, during which we all fraternized mentally with the wealthy Privatus by swigging more of his fine wine. “Go on, Falco—what upset you about the bastards on fire duty?”
“Well, be fair; they were rough lads and it was an emergency situation.”
“Being rough was justified?”
“All they really did was jostle the donkey Gaius was riding.”
Petro and Brunnus looked at each other and laughed. Jointly they decided that this was acceptable: to find Gaius Baebius in your way counted as provocation. “The vigiles would probably have shoved his donkey backwards all the way to the Marine Gate,” scoffed Petro.
“With Gaius Baebius tied upside down under it,” elaborated Brunnus.
Petronius had gone quiet, watching me. “You think we need to watch those builders, Falco?”
“I do.” We let the subject drop.
XVIII
The naval man was older than I expected, a white-haired, fussily dressed type, with a meticulous way of speaking. He looked like a freedman who had previously worked as the Emperor’s wardrobe master: when the Emperor was not the old soldier Vespasian, but one of the dissipated young divinities—Nero or Caligula—who liked incest and murder. The marine came laden with hostess gifts to beg forgiveness for his late arrival; he carried in a whole armful of garlands for our womenfolk, who were unimpressed.
“Charming,” I murmured to Petro, who grumbled back under his breath.
Caninus was the sea biscuit’s name. We were not surprised that a contact recommended by Brunnus turned out to be a liability. Caninus obviously arrived hours late everywhere he went and believed a few blossoms would absolve him. Maia was barely polite as she passed the floral gifts straight to a slave; Junia sneezed loudly; Helena had a defiant glint. Only the children fell screaming with excitement on the long streamers of roses, which would be torn apart in moments.
At last we could eat.
“I hope the cook can find you something that’s still warm,” Maia called after us sarcastically.
“Your sister’s a dour piece!” observed Caninus, too loudly.
“Bit of a drink habit,” Petronius lied, in a more cautious undertone. “Try bringing her a half-amphora of Falernian next time …”
Unfortunately for him, Maia had not disappeared yet, but was leaning on a faux marble column with a purse-lipped intensity that reminded me of our mother as she overheard the libel.
It was a good dinner. I let Petro enjoy his food without telling him what trouble from my sister lay ahead.
When the slaves removed the serving tables after three elegant courses, we signaled that we would pour our own wine now; they left us plenty, being well trained from times when the builders’ guild settled down for a long night discussing measured rates for waterproof concrete and how to fix the voting for the next guild elections.
“We hear you’re a pirate specialist.” Petro was hoping to pick Caninus’ brains, then shed him. No such luck; he liked to talk too much.
“Oh, I’m your man!” Caninus intoned, flinging his right arm madly toward the ornate figured plasterwork of the ceiling and its coving above, like some slurred orator in the afternoon court session. He was left-handed. I noticed that. He kept his left hand clamped firmly around his goblet, so the brimming wine barely rippled, despite the frenetic posing. My physical trainer, Glaucus, was a devotee of keeping your main body still while exercising legs and arms until your eyes watered; he would have loved Caninus.
“Naturally, it depends how you look at it,” Caninus raved. “Let us land and beat up the locals: you are a pirate; I am a heroic warrior with expansionist pretensions on behalf of my city-state … Goes back at least to Athens—”
“The Greeks. Great seafarers,” Petro agreed. From him this was no compliment.
Caninus seemed not to notice. “Piracy was the fast alternative to diplomacy. Same with the damned islands. Rhodes, Crete, Delos—Delos in particular—nothing more than enormous free markets where plunderers could sell off their booty, no questions asked. Think of the Delos bloody slave market—ten thousand souls shifted daily, in peacetime or war. They say prisoners are sold as soon as a captain unloads them, and nobody asks were these once free men and women, who never ought to be in chains.”
“Still?” I managed to get in.
“Still? What do you mean still, Falco? Has some joker told you the slave trade ever stopped?”
“No, Rome’s enormous appetite for slaves has kept the Delos market going—”
“With donkey bells on!”
“Tingaling! I meant, are pirates still the slave merchants who supply the bodies?”
“Who else?” Caninus slammed down his cup. He could do this in safety because it was now empty. Brunnus, who had introduced him to us, was starting to look nervous at the man’s capacity. At least seeing Brunnus sweat made the evening worthwhile. “We have the Pax Romana, Falco. No war, no prisoners of war.”
To save his host’s wine cellar Petronius tried ignoring the empty goblet—so Caninus poured his own. In fairness, he was not selfish; he poured for all the rest of us too. “Drink up, young man,” the nautical lush chivvied Petro, as if to a novice. Fortunately my old drinking partner could pretend to be tolerant.
“Tell us more,” I croaked, although I was now so drunk I had lost interest in research.
Caninus obliged happily, like some awful philosopher groaning into the next part of a three-hour lecture. “Let us have some d
efinitions: piracy, characteristics of—”
“We can send out for a slate if you need to do diagrams.” Brunnus stopped taking this seriously.
Caninus ignored him. “Risk; violence; plunder; death. The four pillars of organized sea theft. Death is the best one, for your average sea thief. Raids on land, setting on merchant ships, they all involve robbery with violence and part of the thrill is—” He stopped himself, puzzled that he could have overlooked a vital element. “Thrill … Risk, thrill, violence, plunder, death—the five pillars.”
Brunnus had a lamp table beside him, on which he carefully arranged three apples, a fig, and a half-eaten hard-boiled egg to represent the crucial quincunx. Quincunx was his word, and I was frankly surprised that he knew it, or was capable of summoning it from his bleared brain.
“Especially death,” intoned Petronius. He was lying on his back on the dining couch he shared with me, inspecting the ceiling. Petro’s dough-colored tunic with the rope patterned braid, his favorite off-duty wear, had crumpled around the armpits. He had a glazed expression that I had not seen since our last night in Britain, the night we left the army. A story in itself.
I felt sick. I told myself it would pass.
“Killing,” Caninus informed us, “is your pirate’s favorite party game.”
“Rape?” suggested Petro.
“Rape is good, but killing is best.”
“In perspective,” Petronius applauded. “Thanks.”
“To these people”—Caninus could burble for hours without thinking about it—“their way of life is just business. Piracy equals trade. Ships equal investment. Plunder equals profits. That’s profits from legitimate activities, to your pirate.”
“Do you”—Brunnus woke up suddenly—“do you do this talk for recruits?”
“‘Knowing the enemy,’” confirmed Caninus, tapping his nose. “My grand speciality. Every time we get a new bloody admiral who has only been a shore woozle until his best friend the Emperor gives him a fleet to play with—on such an ill-starred occasion, I have to do this talk for the woozle. I wear my best whites then. Sometimes I even stay sober while woozle-waffling. In between, I do it once a year for the trierarchs at their Saturnalia bash. Extremely drunk, all parties; with gestures.”
“At Misenum?” queried Brunnus for some reason.
“No, I’m at Ravenna—” Brunnus, who had previously told us Caninus was from the fleet at Misenum, looked annoyed.
“Tell me,” I begged. “Before I pass out beneath this tasteful lamp holder—” A hairy bronze satyr with a large willy. Privatus, who owned it, had pitiful taste. “Tell me about Cilicia.”
Caninus gave me a deep, suspicious stare. Once again he possessed an empty goblet yet this time he refrained from filling it. Petronius supplied wine for him. I waved Petro to stop, but he refilled my cup too. I noticed that he left his own empty.
“What’s your interest in Cilicia, Falco?”
I forced a smile. “If I knew, I would not be asking for clues.”
“Ever been there?” Caninus demanded.
“No.”
“Unusual for Falco,” Petronius inserted loyally. “This is a much-traveled man. Didius Falco is a name that makes barmaids blush in wineries as far apart as Londinium and Palmyra. Say this man’s name in burning Leptis Magna and, I have heard, twenty landlords will rush forward, expecting a very large tip for hay and oats.”
“I think you’ve confused me with my brother, Petro.”
“Sounds like I’d like to meet your brother,” said Caninus. Thank the gods he could not have an introduction; my brother, who loved deadbeats, was long dead.
“I never tip for oats.” I cut across the nonsense: “Cilicia,” I reminded Caninus.
“Cilicia,” he replied. Then there was a long silence, in which he did not even drink.
“Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia. The three mobsters of the eastern seas.” Caninus let an awestruck note feed into his voice. “Rock-bottom countries. They are neighbors; they give shelter to each other. You will find harbors in Pamphylia which have been set up specifically for Cilician pirates’ use as selling posts, and whole Lycian villages which are occupied by Cilician sailors. Cilicia itself has been for a long time the most notorious of all these hideouts. Between the mountains and the sea. The people up in the mountains claim to be entirely agricultural. Maybe they are. But there are endless small harbors on a rocky coast, ideal bases and markets—the two things pirates need.”
“And in these rocky docks,” I suggested, “live people whose ships Pompey the Great did not burn—for some reason. People who say they have turned to farming and who claim they keep ships for occasional fishing and a little light yachting in summer?”
“Ships which just happen to be very fast, very light, often undecked vessels with a lot of zip,” Caninus agreed drily. “Every single one with a big beaked ramming prow.”
“Just something to hold on to as they lean out with shrimp nets!”
“You’re a character, Falco.”
“What’s the word on Pompey then?” I pressed him.
Caninus helped himself to one of the apples Brunnus had placed on his side table. I could not remember if it represented “thrills” or “death.” “Pompey,” he mused, chewing. We immediately knew his take on the Great One. “Ambition with flippers.”
“I like the new definition,” I murmured.
“Pretty!” smirked Petronius. He shared my views on famous men.
“Want my opinion of the Forty-Nine Days?”
“Better define that first.” I had no idea what the Forty-Nine Days were, though I was beginning to think we would be trapped here that long.
Caninus sighed. “Let’s go back, then. It’s the dying days of the old Republic and Rome is beleaguered. Pirates are skidding about all over Mare Nostrum. Our sea is their sea. Pirates are ravaging the coasts of Italy—attacking our cities, coming right into Ostia. Anywhere lowlying and prosperous was an attraction—” He had suddenly changed tense, but this was not the moment for editing. “The corn supply was seriously threatened. With the Rome mob raging because they were hungry, the coasts were bloody dangerous. Enough rape and death to fill a novel—and what was worse (this was their big mistake, in fact), whenever the pirates captured a notable man, they subjected him to insults.”
“Ouch!” cried Petronius, laughing.
“So after enough highborn victims have suffered humiliation, Pompey goes out to rid the seas of the pirates,” I said. “And it takes him forty-nine days?”
“I’ll come to that.” Caninus refused to be rushed. I was right about the forty-nine damned days, though. “First Pompey secures the corn supply—he garrisons legates in Sardinia, Sicily, and North Africa. Funnily enough …” Our mentor ran off at a tangent. “Young Sextus Pompeius, when he later fell out with the triumvirate, used exactly the same tactics as his great papa, but in reverse. He joined up with some pirates, then put a stop to trade from the east, the west, the south. How did he do it? He settled himself in—”
“Sardinia, Sicily, and North Africa!” Petro and I chorused, still trying to hurry him. “But how did Pompey senior manage his spectacular coup?” I insisted.
“It was spectacular.” Caninus sounded serious. “From what I know, he had not more than a hundred ships. To police the whole Mediterranean it was pissing in the wind. Only half the contingent would have been decent. Some were bound to be barnacled hulks dragged out of retirement. It was a rush job. A classic. But somehow Pompey drove the flotilla of pirates all the way to Cilicia. There was a bit of a battle, though nothing for the annals. Then he dealt with them by that special Roman miracle. Clemency!”
“You are joking?” Even Brunnus woke up.
“I am not joking. He could have—you may say he should have— crucified them all. They knew what was due, and yet he put no one to death if they surrendered. They fled home, scared of his reputation. Then, as you said earlier, Falco, Pompey did not burn their ships. He let it be known that
he saw many had been driven to evil by poverty, and he offered the best deal to those who turned themselves in.”
“Penitent pirates flocked to submit?”
“Pirates are sentimental bastards. Pirates will slice your bowels out—but they all love their mothers. Pompey set them up with little farms. All within sight of a river or the coast—that must have been in case the pirates felt homesick for salt water. Adanos, Mallos, Epiphania. A large contingent at Dyme in Achaea. Then of course there was Pompeiopolis—just in case anyone ever forgot who deserved all the credit.”
“New town?”
“No time to build new. Just an old one renamed, Falco.”
“I’ve been talking to a man from Pompeiopolis,” I told him. “A curiosity called Damagoras.”
“Never heard of him. He’s a pirate?”
“Oh no, he claims he never has been.”
“He’s lying!” Caninus scoffed.
“Seems likely. He has a huge house, stuffed with rich loot from all over the Mare Nostrum, and no visible explanation for his acquisitions … So despite the little farms, they still plunder the seas?”
“Rome needs her slaves, Falco.”
“You mean, we want pirates to operate?”
Caninus feigned shock. “I didn’t say that. It is treason to suggest Pompey failed. He solved the problem. It’s a Roman triumph. The seas are clear of pirates. That is official.”
“It’s official bollocks, then.”
“Ah well, Falco, now you’re being political!”
We all laughed. Mind you, since some of us were strangers to one another we did it cautiously.
XIX
None of this was helping me find Diocles.
My restlessness communicated itself to Petro. He rolled suddenly, and stared at Caninus. “Brunnus said you were a pirate specialist. If they don’t exist officially, how come?”
“That’s the navy,” said the sea biscuit, looking coy.
“What are you doing here in Ostia?” I made the query as light as possible. He was a long way from Cilicia, if Cilicia was the pirates’ heartland.
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